Page 33 of Caged By Dance and Desire

They looked at me with cautious eyes, summer lake and stormy gray.

“You're supposed to be outrageously possessive, correct? To the point where any sane human avoids the plague out of you all.”

The men exchanged a look. “And?” Constin prompted.

“Mathen flirts with me and neither of you blink.”

Amber glints warmed Andrei's eyes. “That's different. Mathen is mine.”

“You're aware English only has one word for mine? The English word mine has variations in your language—I’m probably losing something in the translation. What do you mean by he is yours? Not the same thing you mean when you say I'm radthven.”

The men exchanged another, longer, do we need a story and do we have it straight glance.

Oh, boy. I knew that look from years of keeping abreast of the romantic drama in my former company.

“Are you and Mathen lovers? Or were you? He’s your guard.”

Silence.

“You also have female guards. . .oooh.You’ve slept with all of them, haven’t you?” I leaned forward. “Spill.”

“Mathen and I are not currently lovers,” Andrei said as if he was cherry picking his words and found only seven that wouldn’t get him into immediate trouble.

“Well, that’s not a cagey response or anything.” Not currently didn’t mean had never been.

Constin muttered something in Cassanian and Andrei replied, rapid-fire.

I settled for a neutral expression while I entertained myself watching them decide how much to reveal about their culture’s sexual norms.

“Just tell her,” Constin said. “You know you have to.” In English, so he wanted me to know they were debating.

It was also a warning to brace.

“Guys?” I interjected, voice mild. They looked at me. “It’s all good. There’s very little you can say that will surprise me.”

“Oh, I doubt that very much,” was Andrei’s dark reply.

To be fair, their caution was based in reality—they had no way of knowing if I was one of the humans who’d censure and reject them for anything but a ‘traditional’ heterosexual, monogamous relationship status.

Andrei sighed. “He’s luudthen.”

It wasn’t a word in my limited Cassanian vocabulary and from the gravity with which he’d said it, shaded with reluctance as if he’d admitted something unbearably intimate, it wouldn’t have been anyway.

“I don’t know the word.”

“It means. . .” he paused, then cursed. “English is. . .it means I would die for him, kill for him, and he me. We’re closer than family, more intimate than lovers. There is no question of trust between us.” Andrei’s expression balanced between grave and vulnerable. “It’s the only word we use for love openly among enemies.”

“That’s because it’s also a threat,” Constin added, also quiet, but more resolute. “No one will attack someone called luudthen by a Lord with power greater than theirs unless they’re begging to die a slow, terrible death along with their loved ones.”

I studied them, understanding what had been eluding me about their relationship dynamic.

“Constin is luudthen also,” I said.

“Yes.” Andrei lowered his lashes. “Philea, Theland and Esseum as well.”

I pursed my lips. “I’m not. I can’t be. We don’t have lifetimes of shared experiences.”

And radthven kind of cancelled luudthen out. The latter included real love, the former just. . .possession.

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